My Southern Pound Cake Was A Flop

Hello friends and happy Tuesday. My husband and I just returned from an overnight trip to Nashville. About every four months Mark has to go to Nashville to see his kidney doctor or an NP to check on how well the transplanted kidney is doing. The doctor visit and bloodwork lasts approximately thirty minutes or so but the drive over and back is about four hours each way. Several months ago we started going over the day before. We leave in the afternoon, take our time, have a great dinner out, spend the night and have the doctors’ visit early the next morning and then start home. This is so much better. We are not exhausted the way we used to be when we tried to do it all in one day.

So yesterday was our day to drive to Nashville. It was eclipse day. Our area was only going to see a partial eclipse this time. Some areas had better luck than others. We were driving so we really didn’t get to see totality. As I said it was a bit of a disappointment anyway because it was just too cloudy. It did get very dark and of course that is exciting in the middle of the afternoon. We had a great dinner in Nashville and went to bed early and got a good night’s sleep.

***You can see how dark it is for the middle of the afternoon.***

On our way home today we stopped at the Cracker Barrel in Lebanon for breakfast. If you don’t have Cracker Barrel’s in your area, you just don’t know what you are missing. It is mostly southern cooking and it is really yummy. There is also a wonderful gift shop and as luck would have it I had a gift card, that was given to me at Christmas. This is what I bought. It was also 50% off so it was quite a bargain. I have a thing for cake stands and I have quite a few of them. I try to refrain from buying more because I just don’t have anywhere to keep them. I will probably keep this one on my table.

My sister and I did a little shopping on Saturday. We hadn’t been out together in several weeks. We thought some retail therapy would do us both a bit of good. We went to T. J. Maxx in Cleveland. Cleveland is just south of us about forty miles. It’s not quite as crazy as Knoxville on a Saturday.

***I bought these pillows for my couch. I put them on the piano bench to get a good shot of them. I love the color.***

***I have been wanting a white sweater jacket for some time. I can’t wait to wear this.***

Now for the pound cake. Remember this book I bought when I was in Nashville a couple of weeks ago? My plan was to make each of the cakes in this book, there’s sixty cake recipes. The first cake was a classic southern pound cake. So on Sunday afternoon I got to work.

***The ingredients: I thought it was a little odd to use powdered sugar instead of granulated sugar.***

***I may have beaten the mixture too much***

***I put the batter into the pans and baked for the recommended time.***

***They looked beautiful and smelled so good.***

They were terrible!!!! I could have used them as a weapon. They were hard and so dense. I googled possible problems and it seems as though I may have beat the batter too much. Over beating can cause gluten to form and this can make the cake really dense.

I was so disappointed that my pound cake turned out so bad. I did learn that maybe I shouldn’t beat the batter too much next time. If you have any advice on how to make better pound cakes, and not turn them into weapons of destruction or door stops please let me know. The next cake is a chocolate pound cake, so we shall see.

That is what has been happening around here how about you?

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!

Pound Cake and Some Thrift Store Finds – Hello Monday!!!

Hello and happy Monday how was your weekend? It rained all weekend and most of today. But at the end of the day the clouds suddenly parted and the sun came out. It was a nice surprise.

Over the weekend I decided to bake a pound cake in my bundt pan. I have had this pan for years. It weighs a ton. I got it from my husband’s grandmother. I haven’t used it for a long time. I got the pan out, it is cast iron, greased it really well and made my cake. I decided for extra moistness I would add an additional egg, some extra butter, and a little extra water to the mix.

***Oh I forgot to mention it also stuck to the pan.***

At first all looked well. The cake rose beautifully, even though my oven is somewhat on its last legs, and that may be what I am getting for Valentine’s Day. I know, so romantic. But when I took the cake out it seemed to deflate. It sunk down to about half the height that it was. But it tasted great anyway. I think adding all the extras was probably a little too much. In the past I have added a couple of things but it was probably a little too much at one time.

On Saturday I visited a couple of thrift stores in search of some bottles for my bottle tree. I didn’t have any luck. I had ordered a few extra from Amazon and I put those on the tree. Even though I didn’t find any bottles I did find a few other things that I just couldn’t seem to pass up.

I still have several stems for bottles. I will continue my search. I think that will be half the fun.

First, this purse. I just love it. The tag had spring purse on the label. I found it at a local antique mall. The booth was a new one with a lot of great stuff. The purse is brand new. I don’t think it would hold a lot of things but it will be perfect for spring and summer. It’s also quite large. It may make a good knitting bag.

Next, A few weeks ago I bought these green glass bottles and this week I found the little glass flowers. I think they go great together.

I bought this book by Beverly Cleary. I had so many of her books growing up. I still have a lot of them. This is one I didn’t have so I was so happy to get it.

Next, I love this little yellow McCoy bowl. I will probably save it to give as a Birthday gift to someone. I actually bought it with them in mind.

And finally look at these stickers. I don’t know about where you are from but stickers are big now. We sell a lot of them in our gift shop at work. I work with a lot of young people. They will love these. All of these stickers came in a small pack for $1.00. There are ten different stickers in each pack!!! I bought three packs because I didn’t really know if they were stickers. They are, and I plan to give them out to our team members. I will go back and get more of these.

Look at the lake at our house. Because of all the rain over the weekend the lake rose quickly and it is really muddy.

I leave you with a picture of my little Izzy. She is so adventurous and a scaredy cat at the same time. She is mama cat’s favorite of the outside kitties. But you didn’t hear that from me.

Have a wonderful week!!!!!

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!!

Goodbye January

Well here we are with the first month of January into its last hours. It’s hard to believe that one month of the year has gone already. January has been a bit of a crazy month. Both long and short at the same time. We said goodbye to 2023 and got ready to start a fresh new year. Lots of snow and ice for us. I read 4 books and listened to 2 audio books. I will have a rundown on those for you in an upcoming post. I finished several knitting pieces and the heart cross stitch. I had a lot of winter snuggly time at home and that is fine with me.

Last week we again had the taste of rural living. Remember I told you the week before, that we had the downed tree and we had to cut it off of the driveway before we could get out. Last week we lost power for over two hours. It went out around 6:00 AM Thursday morning. When we lose power we also lose our water, because we have a pump, and our phones because we have to have power for the internet. So there we were.

We always like to report our outages to the power company and not just hope that someone in our area will do it. To do this we have to go to the top of our driveway and get a cell signal to call the utility board. We then get a recording and we report the outage. The driveway was very dark because the outside light on the driveway was out as well. And I forgot to mention it was sooooo foggy. Oh and we have to back up the driveway because we always pull down the driveway when coming in.

My husband and I both went to the top of the driveway so that one of us could get out and open the gate. It was not easy backing up the driveway with no lights except the back up lights. The fog made it even worse. I had left the house without my glasses. That added to the difficulty, because I wound up behind the wheel doing the driving. We finally made it to the top, we have a very long driveway, and got the outage reported. It had already been reported by a neighbor. But you never know.

***This is what it looked like at 6:00 AM***

The power was out for over two hours and I was a little late getting into work. We never found out what the issue was. It was a widespread issue on our road. Several houses were affected. We do have a small generator that we can use if the power is out for hours or days.

Over the weekend I felt like I was running a bakery. Secretly this has always been a dream so it was actually a lot of fun. It started with my nephew requesting sourdough bread. I make this from a starter that I have had for probably fifteen years or more. It stays in the refrigerator until I feed it. He also requested some peanut butter pies to take to his coworkers. He just moved and started a new job a couple of weeks ago. It was also my brother in law’s birthday and I wanted to bake something for him as well. If you want to read more about the sour dough bread and how I make it, visit this post I did a few years ago. It is definitely a process.Making Sour Dough Bread

I made six loaves of the bread, 20 small peanut butter pies, and about 2 dozen cake pops. The cake pops were just something I decided to do at the last minute. I had never made them before. They were okay but I definitely need to work on those. So I did a lot of baking on Saturday morning and delivered bread, and pies and cake balls all over town in the afternoon. I finished the evening with a visit to my little mother in law at the assisted living village.

The peanut butter pies were a big hit.

I also spent some time over the weekend cleaning my silver bracelets. I am ashamed to say that I haven’t worn them in forever because they looked so bad. I bought some cleaner and got to work on them. I feel like they are new again.

This is not my cat. Well she sort of is I guess. She lives at work. She is feral and we haven’t been able to catch her. We are trying to get one of our team members to agree to take her home. We named her Anthe. Isn’t she beautiful? We feed her and take care of her the best we can. She has been with us for several months. I hate to trap her but that may be the only way we can get her to someone’s home where they might be able to tame her.

How is your week going?

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!!!

Countdown to Christmas

Happy Tuesday !!!! Less than two weeks from today Christmas will be over!!! How can that even be true? November flew by and now December is doing the same thing. I have been doing a little shopping here and there. I will be honest I am not one of those people who can plan two months in advance and get all of their Christmas shopping done a month before Christmas. It seems like at this time of year I like to enjoy the festivities as they come along. If that means shopping for gifts at the last minute that is just the way it will have to be.

The weather here has been cold but I am loving it. That’s the way it should be here this time of the year. We have also had some much needed rain.

I baked bread last week and even though the temps were cold it rose very nicely. This is sour dough bread and I probably have mentioned it a few hundred times, but I have had this same bread starter for about fifteen plus years. It has to be fed every 3-5 days. I have gone more than a week between feedings and it is always fine. Several years ago I did a post about baking sourdough bread including the recipe, but as I said you must have the starter. You can actually make the starter as well if you are not lucky enough to have someone pass it along to you. Making Sourdough Bread

***I can always tell when it is going to rise well.***

***And I had to have a piece as soon as it came out of the oven. That is when it tastes the best.***

I don’t think I have ever had a “traditional” tree skirt around my Christmas tree. I always like to use things I have around the house. Maybe a blanket or piece of fabric. This year I dug out this fluffy throw and put it around the bottom of the tree. The kitties immediately thought it was just for them. And who am I kidding. If they love to snuggle on it how can I stop them.

***First Gus dominated the new tree skirt AKA something new and fluffy to snuggle on.***

***Then Kitty Kitty, but only when Gus was not around.***

***And then both of them gave in and snuggled at the same time***.

Friday night we celebrated my nephew Tyler. It was his 22nd birthday. We had so much fun. He grilled hamburgers for us and we brought all the side dishes and I made him a butterfinger cake, his favorite. Where does the time go. The first picture was his first birthday and now he is all grown up.

I made my husband a pecan pie. I told you in a previous post that I burned the last one I made. It was really bad. I had the setting on the oven way too high, by mistake, and it burned. I tried it again over the weekend and tried my pie crust shield. I bought this at an estate sale earlier in the year. I had never even heard of one. You place it over the top of your pie while it is baking and it keeps the edges from burning. It worked great!!! I think I paid $1.00 for it.

***And look at those edges. No burnt edges.***

After I spent time knitting the Christmas ornaments. If you missed that post you can check it out here. I saw a picture with these adorable little toboggans. I decided to make some of those for a winter garland. I love the way they turned out. Another great way to use left over yarn. For these I used the size 5 double pointed needles.

I hung them from my mantelpiece. This is not the best picture. I also moved them to a table on the other side of the room. I eventually went back to the mantel I like having them between our Christmas stockings.

***You can get a little better look at them here.***

Last night we had our work Christmas party. We usually have it at a restaurant and I don’t have to do a lot to prepare. This year we decided to have it on the property at our new Visitors’ Center. It was a lot of fun but so much work. I didn’t get home until really late. I meant to post this last night but I didn’t make it home in time.

I hope you are having a wonderful holiday season enjoying all the fun with family and friends.

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!!